Wise Startup Blog

Well, I am a productivity nut, but have never embraced the whole Gettings Things Done from David Allen.

Basically it is a technique or method for achieve higher efficiency in your daily actions. All of their techniques are a bit too complicated for me, so I decided to start with one of the simple principles.

Mailbox Dominance

Normally I’m pretty quick to respond to content in my emails and clear out my inbox, but I’ve found myself with emails sitting in my box because I can’t respond to them yet, or leave them as a to-do relic.

Now I myself don’t think this policy is that bad, but apparently there are more efficient ways to do things. Here goes…

Organize your Mailbox into 3 boxes

• Action
• Hold
• Archive

Action

Action is for all emails that need to be dealt with now or in the near future:

Say you get a newsletter, shove it into action.

Say you get an email from your boss that requires immediate attention, shove it into action.

Say you get an invoice to ship a package in eBay, shove it into action.

Then, once everything is organized, and you have the time, go to the action folder, and dispatch all of those emails. This is a more efficient method of clearing emails, as you focus all of your energy on these action related emails as opposed to spending your time determining if an email is spam, action oriented, you need to defer it, etc.

Hold

Now this is a folder that’s kind of in limbo. Hold is for emails that do not require an immediate action of you, but you may need access to in the coming weeks.

This is the folder that’s probably going to haunt people like you and me; you don’t want these emails to sit in your box, but you just can’t get rid of them.

Say you’ve forwarded an email to a colleague, and are waiting for them to respond, but you don’t want to forget about the email, leave it in hold.

Say you have a conference you want to attend, have already forwarded it to colleagues, but want to keep it on your mind, leave it in hold.

It is imperative that you keep on top of Hold and don’t let it pile up like your inbox used to.

Archive

This is definitely my favorite folder, and probably the easiest to use for people.

Whenever you receive an email that does not belong in the trash, but you don’t need to followup with it (unless asked to do so), archive it.

The archive is the section for emails that you may have to search for at some point, but don’t necessitate a response, or any action at all.

Say you get a google alerts about your company, and there’s nothing significant in it, archive it.

Say you get an email from your investors referencing some archaic statistic, archive it.

Say you’ve just finished dealing with an email in the Action file, archive it.

In the next series I’m going to cover how to maximize your email inbox to take advantage of these new tips.